The 7 habits of highly effective

people

Habit # 5

“ Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood ”

By. Stephen covey
 Table of contents

01 What does it mean? 04 Skills of Empathic

Listening

02 Principles of Empathic 05
Communication Five Poor Listening Skills

03 The concept of Empathic 06 Diagnose before You

listening: prescribe
What does it mean?
 What does it mean?

Seek first to Understand, then to be

understood is the 5th out of the 7 habits.
Its the habit of listening to other people's
feelings and ideas. So, when you're
talking to someone, you are actually
listening to understand the other persons
viewpoint.
 Principles of Empathic Communication

“ The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of. “

❑ People try to rush in and try to fix things with good advice

❑ To fix a problem you have to first truly understand it.

It is easy to see how this remark can be used to assert the futility of reason and
the reliability of the emotions or to argue that the heart rules over the head
Principles of Empathic Communication

Covey tells us early on in this chapter that “even if (and especially when) another
person is not coming from a Win/Win paradigm, seek first to understand”. Habit 5
shows us how we can cooperatively deal with situations that arise within Win/Win
situations when we’re trying to work together, taking into account our differences.
The author draws our attention to a general tendency to rush into other people’s
issues and try to fix them by giving advice, often failing to “take time to diagnose, to
really, deeply understand the problem first.”
examples
Character and communication

there are four basic type of communication :

«  Communication is the most important skill in life »

Stephen Covey
In comparison the many hours spent learning how to do the first three, the last type
of communication has been neglected, says Covey. "Comparatively few people have
had any training in listening at all." He explains that seeking to first understand
involves a very deep paradigm shift: we typically seek first to be understood. We
have a tendency to listen with the intent of replying rather than that of
understanding. We're generally either speaking or preparing to speak, most often
considering what the other person is saying only based on our own experiences and
points of view.
Empathic listening:

“In empathic listening, you do listen with your ears, but more
importantly you also listen with your eyes and with your heart.
You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behavior. You
use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit,
you feel..” 
Dr. Stephen R. Covey
The concept of Empathic listening:

Listening with the intent to understand is called empathic listening.

Empathic listening gets inside another person’s frame of reference. you
understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel. Empathic
listening involves much more than registering, reflecting, or even
understanding the words that are said.
There are different levels of listening: 
Level 1: Ignoring the other person entirely 
Level 2: Pretending to listen to the person
Level 3: Selectively listening to what they’re saying 
Level 4: Attentively listening to them 
Level 5: Listening to the speaker with empathy 
Covey wants to draw attention towards the most
important fifth level, which is empathic listening
because it helps to see the world from other
people’s angles so that you can recognize how
they feel.
Skills of Empathic
Listening:

Empathic listening cannot be

mastered in a day. There are some
skills that you need to practice :
 Skills of Empathic Listening:

1. Mimic Content:
All you need is to listen carefully to the words of the speaker and repeat them.
2. Rephrase the Content:
This skill comes under verbal communication.it is effective because it gives
the feel to the listener that you are concentrating on what he is saying.
3. Reflect Feeling:
This skill is more about what the person feels instead of what he says.
4. Rephrase the Content and Reflect the Feeling:
This skill is a blend of both the second and third skills. With this skill, you can
provide the psychological air to the listener because you not only rephrase the
content but also adds the feelings in it as well.
Without empathic listening, we can
halt our emotional connections with
others and can invalidate someone
else’s feelings, even if that wasn’t
our intention. Thus, empathic
listening becomes crucial
Genuine Listening

 Three ways to be a genuine listener

 First, listen with your , , and

 Second, stand in their shoes
 Third, practice mirroring
Habit 5- Genuine Listening

 This will lead to real

communication
 We need to practice this
 First, Listen with your
eyes, heart and ears

 Only 7% of I didn’t say you had an

communication is attitude problem.
contained in the words
we use
I didn’t say you had an
 53% of communication attitude problem.
comes from body
language
 40% comes from the I didn’t say you had an
tone or feeling in our attitude problem.
voice
 Even adults need to be reminded
about this!
 This is a portion of an email that we received from Dr. Casteel before the
start of the new school year!
 “…let us create Chandler Unified School District’s culture to be a place
where:
• kindness is expected
• we seek first to understand
• words are selected carefully knowing how impactful they are
• differences are valued and embraced and
• team work leads to excellence.”
 Stand in their shoes

 “Until you walk in another man’s moccasins you can’t imagine the smell” –
Robert Byrne
 If one person has on green lenses and another has red lenses in their glasses,
they will see things differently, so listening to their perspective is important
(have different paradigms)
 Conversations are not competitions!
Practice Mirroring

 Think like a mirror

 Mirroring is repeating back in your own words
what you understand the other person to be
saying
 Mirroring is not:
 Judging
 Giving advice
 Mimicking
Mirroring ≠ Mimicking
Mirroring Phrases

 “What I’m hearing you say is…”

 “So, as I see it …”
 “I can see that you’re feeling …”
 “You feel that …”
 “So, what you’re saying is …”
 Mirroring is used during important or sensitive
conversations or if you are having communication
problems with someone
Diagnose Before You Prescribe
 It is Very difficult and hard to seek first to understand or to
diagnose Before you prescribe you, but it is a correct principle
obvious in many areas of life .
 We often prescribe before making a proper diagnosis when
communicating.
 We should first take the time to deeply understand the
problems presented to us.
 If you don’t have confidence in the diagnosise ,you won’t have
confidence in the prescription.
 The key to good judgment is effective understanding.
 We must first understand the problem before we can
effectively address the solution.
 By judging first,a person will never fully understand.
 Especially under stressful circumstances,when discussing
complex issues with our loved ones,the way we ̎listen̎ is to
̎̎prescribe
̎ before diagnosing.̎We jump to conclusions,
attack the speaker’s views and defend our own conclusions
before really deeply understanding.
 Diagnosing before you prescribe is also fundamental to
law.The professional lawyers first gather the facts to
understand the situation,the laws and precedents,before
preparing the case.
 A good teacher will assess the class before teaching .
 A good student will understand before he applies.
 A good parent will understand before evaluating or
judging.
Conclusions
thank for your attention